This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Toronto lane named for "heroic couple"

Sam and Bella Immergluck were Holocaust survivors whose dry-cleaning business near Harbord St. became a gathering place for students, professors and neighbours.

Bella and Sam Immergluck. (submitted)

Immergluck Lane will be officially unveiled on June 22. It runs behind the building where Sam and Bella Immergluck operated their drycleaners for more than 30 years, connecting Robert St. and Sussex Mews, in the Harbord Village neighbourhood. (Rachel Mendleson / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

654 Spadina Ave. in 1979. Sam and Bella Immergluck operated Student Elite Cleaners in the Harbord Village neighbourhood for more than 30 years, from 1957 to 1990. (City of Toronto Archives)

654 Spadina Ave. is now occupied by a pizza shop. (Rachel Mendleson / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Bella and Sam Immergluck on their wedding day. They were Holocaust survivors who moved to Canada in 1948. (submitted)

For more than 30 years, the charisma and open-door policy of Sam and Bella Immergluck, Holocaust survivors who built a new life in Toronto, made Student Elite Cleaners and Tailors on Spadina Ave. a gathering place for students, professors, anyone seeking a listening ear.

The drycleaners is now a pizza shop, and the Immerglucks have long since passed away, but their contribution is not forgotten. At the urging of the local residents’ association, a laneway named in their honour will stitch their story into the fabric of the community.

“We’re not just recognizing a heroic couple,” said Janice Dembo, a former customer who nominated the Immerglucks. “We’re also recognizing the role they played in this extraordinary city, and their neighbourhood.”

Article Continued Below

Immergluck Lane connects Robert St. and Sussex Mews north of Harbord St., behind the former drycleaners. It will be officially unveiled on June 22 as part of the Harbord Village Residents’ Association’s ongoing laneway naming project.

In some respects, the couple’s experience reflects a shared history — and hardship — of many of the Jewish immigrants who settled in the residential neighbourhood north of Kensington market in the early 20th century.

Both grew up in Krakow, Poland. They were friends before the war, and both suffered tremendous loss at the hands of the Nazis.

By the time they reconnected behind the barbed wire of Auschwitz, Sam Immergluck’s wife and son had been killed, and he was sewing SS uniforms. Bella’s husband, a diplomat, was also gone. She had been subjected to the experiments of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, and was unable to have children as a result.

They married after the war and landed in Canada in 1948. At first, they lived with Bella Immergluck’s sister’s family on Brunswick Ave., but the arrangement didn’t last.

“Bella was very strong,” said her niece, Annie Wagmaister. “She wanted her own place.”

They opened a small tailor shop in a garage at the corner of Huron and Harbord Sts., in 1955. In 1957, they relocated to 654 Spadina Ave., under the banner Student Elite Cleaners, and moved into the apartment upstairs.

A well-educated, confident woman, Bella Immergluck had what Dembo describes as “a regal bearing.” She held court at the front of the store, and insisted on using honorifics to greet her customers, many of whom were professors and students.

“She carried herself like a diplomat’s wife,” Wagmaister said. “The fact that she survived Auschwitz gave the attitude that she could beat anything.”

By contrast, Sam Immergluck was sweet and quiet, like “a little mouse,” and could usually be found toiling in the back, Wagmaister said.

“They were two totally different people. You would never think they’d be together,” she said. “However, they both had immense respect for each other, and they were close in everything.”

Over notoriously strong cups of coffee — there was always a pot on a hot plate in the store — they kept up with neighbourhood news, current events and the academic progress of the university students they served.

If Dembo was feeling down, she said she would often drop by the store and pull up a chair at the counter.

“They took people under their wing,” she said.

Their nephew, Irv Kirstein, recalled one student who would buy cheap T-shirts and come in to have the sleeves cut off, although he could have easily done the job himself.

“He came in to talk,” Kirstein said. “He came in because he wanted someone to listen.”

The drycleaners was a gathering place for the extended family, and their two-storey apartment was filled with photos of nieces, nephews — and students.

The couple took in a teenaged nephew so he could attend a downtown high school and loaned another the money to buy his first car.

When Wagmaister showed up at their door in the middle of the night, in tears, after giving up on her attempt to sleep outside for Beatles tickets, her aunt got dressed, and stood in line in her place.

If they were disappointed that they couldn’t have children of their own, they never mentioned it, said Kirstein, who said he and his siblings were made to feel as if “we were (their) kids.”

The couple opened up “not only their home, but their hearts,” he said.

Sam Immergluck died in 1988, at age 78, after a difficult battle with colon cancer. His wife promptly moved out of the neighbourhood and “virtually never went back to the store,” Wagmaister said.

“She just couldn’t face the fact that he wasn’t there,” she said. “We had to close it down.”

She passed away in 1995 at 83.

Gentrification, development and several waves of immigration have changed the Harbord Village neighbourhood, but its proximity to University of Toronto means it will always be a magnet for students and professors.

On a recent morning, a string of World Cup flags was fastened above the entranceway to the pizza shop at 654 Spadina Ave. The exterior paint on the upper floors was peeling, and the shingles faded.

But in the laneway behind the building where the Immerglucks worked and lived, two gleaming, blue-and-white street signs are a reminder of the couple — and the mark they left here.

Delivered dailyThe Morning Headlines Newsletter

The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com